A little backgound, I'm 6'4", 266 lbs. I carry it as well as one could hope, having 200-205 lbs of lean body weight. I'm down from 310 lbs a year ago, which was mostly due to my truly prodigious amount of boozing at the time. Been sober about 13 months now.

However, I don't look so great naked. I'm about 40 lbs overweight, and no matter how much Subway I eat, I'm not losing weight. So I'm starting this crazy-ass diet.

What is it? You take a hormone (HCG) every day in the morning. Some inject it, others put it under the tongue, I'm doing the latter. For two days you gorge yourself on the fattiest foods possible. (I had a triple whopper for the first time, it was almost gloriously awful.) Then you eat 500 calories a day for the next 26-40 days. The make-up of those calories is very specific, and you can find plenty of resources on the web. You supposedly lose an average of a pound a day. Then you get off the hormone and start a maintenance diet. I wouldn't have tried a diet as nuts as this if I hadn't seen it work for my female friend first; she lost 30 lbs in a month and looks really healthy.

I'm on my second day of the 500 calorie diet. It's tough, but not unreasonably so. The HCG really curbs the actual physical hunger, but I still crave junk food.

So I thought I'd just create this little topic to let y'all know if it works.

Your body needs a certain amount of calories per day in order to function, which is your Basal Metabolic Rate.

A person of your height/size needs about 3000 calories a day just to maintain your weight. Cutting back to 500 calories, is a huge reduction in that amount (2500) plus excercise would obviously lead to weight loss since 3500 calories = 1 lb of fat, but its doing more harm to your body than knocking the weight off.

I dont even want to tell you that HCG is a female hormone, which is what the pregnancy tests look for to determine if a woman is pregnant or not. Theres a ton of side effects as well, the least of which is Man Boobs (which, if you're a little pudgy like me you have anyway so..) as well as headaches and high blood pressure.

First off, Subway isn't exactly healthy. It's a lesser of evils in the fast food world, but you're still eating a ton of refined bread, sodium-packed meat, and if you're like most others, negating any potential health benefits by glopping on mayo and other sauces. Now, as for this diet, what happens after the 40 days when you go back to eating the way you did before? You think that weight and more isn't coming back? How long ago did your friend do this? I'm willing to bet she puts most of the weight back on. Two to three pounds is about the maximum amount of weight you should be losing a week, unless you're grossly overweight.

Go buy The Metabolism Advantage by John Berardi. It's an amazing book that essentially offers a blueprint of how to follow a healthy way of eating that is sustainable for the rest of your life. Diets fail because they're only temporary. People slash the calories to an extreme, drop some weight, plateau, then go back to eating the way they used to. But since they've basically starved themselves, they've slowed down their metabolism, which means your body is now going to start storing more food as fat. This is why people go on diets, lose a lot of weight, and then not only gain it all back, but a little more, too.

Berardi isn't big on supplements. With the Metabolism Advantage, he suggests taking creatine, fish oil caps, protein powder, and a greens supplement (since the typical American diet is grossly lacking in veggie consumption).

I can provide more details if you're interested, but I can say without a doubt this is a better way of weight loss than what you're about to do. Your diet smacks of a quick fix that will ultimately lead to an extended battle with weight issues.

The basic formula to lose 1 lb a week is to figure out your BMR and the amount of calories you need per day to maintain your weight and then knock off 500 calories per day either through eating less or exercise. After 7 days you will have cut back 3500 calories which is the equivalent of 1 lb. You can keep doing this but with the extra weight you lose, you'll have to adust your BMR and the amount of calories needed to maintain the new weight which will be slightly different. The major difference in this plan is that there's no trickery to your body or anything and you'll be much more likely to both stay on the diet and continue to lose the weight AND keep it off. The major problem for most is that its only 1 pound a week and a lot of people want to lose more than that, but losing more than 2 lbs per week (1000 calories less per day) no matter what your body weight throws your metabolism off too much and causes the common problems of gaining the weight back easily and not being able to stay on the diet. Once you hit your target weight, you only have to keep your calories at the maintaining weight level and you wont gain any back (though with exercise you could lose more).

The reverse principle is why people gain weight. If your BRM equates out to 2500 calories per day to maintain your current weight and you eat 3000 a day for a week, you'll end up gaining 1 lb.

To be perfectly honest, inasmuch as it's based around fatty foods and hormone therapy, this sounds like the kind of diet that culminates in a heart attack, but HOLY SHIT IT'S SPECIAL K EVERYONE! Welcome back, Special K! Just run several miles a day and eat less. That's how I got rid of my winter bloat.

According to the calculator, my BMR is 1900 calories, which is roughly what I was eating before my diet anyway.

I'm trying to lose weight due to jiu jitsu tournaments coming up in the upcoming months (and well, not wanting to be husky anymore), so I'm very strict on what I eat now. I eat about 800 calories a day, lots of fruits, veggies, oats and water. I'm lazy with going to the gym (I'm trying to work on that), but I train in BJJ 5-6 days a week.

I weigh myself when I wake up and before I go to sleep everyday and keep a log on it. Monday morning, I woke up at 198.6 lbs and as of today, I'm 192.4 lbs.

Is this a good diet, or am I essentially starving myself for no reason?

You're eating too little. It's rarely ideal to go more than 500 calories over or under your maintenance level. Even if you're trying to lose weight, you shouldn't cut calories too severely, otherwise you'll bring your metabolism to a standstill and wind up packing on more weight when you inevitably start consuming more calories.

There's a common misconception that in order to lose weight, you need to eat less. The reality is that while you need to cut calories, you still should be eating in regular intervals. You go too long without eating and your body is conditioned to go into starvation mode and thus starts storing food as fat. I hate to sound like a shill, but Berardi has seven basic "rules" for maintaining a healthy diet and it's worked well for me when I've adhered to it.

QUOTE

1. Eat every 2-3 hours, no matter what. You should eat between 5-8 meals per day.

6. Drink only non-calorie containing beverages, the best choices being water and green tea.

7. Eat mostly whole foods (except workout and post-workout drinks).So what about calories, or macronutrient ratios, or any number of other things that I’ve covered in other articles? The short answer is that if you aren’t already practicing the above-mentioned habits, and by practicing them I mean putting them to use over 90% of the time (i.e., no more than 4 meals out of an average 42 meals per week violate any of those rules), everything else is pretty pointless.

That last point is pretty important. Too many people are looking for a supplement or quick fix to "look better naked," when in reality, it's not something that's easily achieved for most people. Following those guideposts is a way you can achieve that goal and likely maintain it.

Special K is obviously going to do this crazy diet whether we endorse it or not. I'm sure you'll see quick results, but I'd be interested to see where your weight is at six months from now.

Special K, you should probably listen to Mik. He's a biologist, if I'm not mistaken, and would surely know a thing or two about this stuff. If he tells you that you're on the wrong road, heed his advice. Now in the Music folder, another story, but I'd defer to him here.

You don't need to have a real extensive knowledge to know this is an impending disaster. I know his credentials add some validity to the matter, but others have offered some true advice here.

Point is, quick fixes aren't permanent ones. Even if you end up dropping weight, you'll likely gain it back once you're off this extreme diet. I'm not sure why people think they can go on these extreme diets for a brief period of time, drop weight, and then go back to their previously shitty diet and expect to keep the weight off. And it's not just about caloric intake, either. My mom probably consumes 1500 or less calories each day, but it's a diet the consists mostly of desserts, egg salad, and various types of bread and it shows.

Re: Milky's weight loss. I'm willing to bet you lost a decent amount of lean muscle during this time. I remember going down to 155 from 215 over two years when I was in high school and thinking how great it was. But that extreme weight loss was a result of less eating, but not better eating. Subsequently, I was a skinny fat 155 pounder.

Shit, I worked lumber at Home Depot for 3 months before I got another engineering job. 'twas a bitch. I stayed the same weight, but definitely gained some muscle and lost some fat. What a shitty job, though.

Putting down the bottle is definitely the first thing to do. An ounce of vodka has something like 70 calories. And that's just about the lowest calorie booze. I was drinking two or three full bottles of Cisco a day, supplemented with a sea of 211. I lost all the alcohol weight wtihin 3-4 months after getting sober.

And HCG doesn't do shit for weight loss unless you're on the specific diet. The tests versus placebo didn't implement that specific diet.

I think you'd be better off going down to around 1500 calories made up of 6 meals of the essentials (fruits, whole grains, lean meat, veggies, dairy) with exercise as has been mentioned. The other benefit is while this is slower it will lead you into hopefully a routine that will become second nature and you won't even realize what you are doing and will continue to eat healthy (even boosting up to the 2000 calorie average).

I'm pretty sure the body burns 500 calories, if not more, just doing normal everyday activities. And there's no way you can get all the nutrients you need on that kind of diet without extensive supplementation. Whatever muscle you may have will rapidly degenerate due to not being supplied with enough protein and other essential nutrients.